


drown

by skeletonsmama



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/F, Femslash February, Mermaid!Cosette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1203826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonsmama/pseuds/skeletonsmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette watched the girl sitting alone on the pebbled shore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainSlippery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainSlippery/gifts).



> Warnings for: implied drowning, off-screen domestic abuse and heavily implied sexual abuse. 
> 
> For erica, because you should do your homework and get rewarded with lesbian mermaids every day uvu

**1923, a hidden shingle beach in north-west France**

 

The water was black as sin and flat as slate. Cosette watched the girl sitting alone on the pebbled shore, her tail only making the minutest of ripples on the surface. The figure was undoubtedly female, despite her shorn hair and distinctly male swimming suit; the curve of a breast was visible, and the long lashes from which salty tears dripped were far too _pretty_ to belong to any human boy.

And Cosette had known _many_ human boys over the years.

She rose from the water with a deliberate thrust of her tail. Cosette indulged a long moment to readjust to the air. The heady scent of salt filled her flat nostrils as she turned her head to the star-crossed sky and _breathed_.

The girl on the beach started, eyes wide and rimmed red.

Cosette chuckled lightly, a harsh series of clicks and whistles until she cleared the last of the ocean from her bones and became more human than porpoise again.

The girl had her eyes fixed on Cosette and she used the attention to draw her close. As she spoke waves began to lap lightly at shore. “The sea wants to embrace you darling. Come let your tears mingle with it’s waters, it makes no distinction.”

Cosette gurgled happily as the girl waded deep enough for the water to lap gently at her waist. She ducked back under the surface, gliding effortlessly to reach where she stood.

Cosette rose up and immediately set on inspecting the girls hair while she asked questions the moment they came to mind.

“Why would you make yourself look as a boy? Do you have a name, human? What do you want of the sea this evening, you sad young thing?” Closer now, the mermaid noted how she bore the red-purple bruises of a harsh lovers hands on her arms and face.

The girl answered none of her questions. Instead she asked one of her own.

“Are you one of the merfolk? I thought you couldn’t possibly exist--”

“Don’t dwell on the tail, my love. Not when there is such more intrigue in _you_.” Cosette had removed her hands from the girl’s hair but she didn’t move away, still near to the heat of the girl’s skin. The words she spoke didn’t have the bitter tinge to them as they had had last time she’d whispered them in a forsaken sailor’s ear.

It wasn’t the man’s blood that her mother demanded that made her heart feel like a lead anchor in her chest; it was what they would do to her before she ripped out their throats with her teeth below the flashing waves. Calloused hands ‘caressing’ her chest and filthy mouths claiming her lips as if they were _entitled_. Her mother despised her needing to go to the surface, but her ability to seduce had long since waned and they needed their sustenance.

“Eponine,” the girl began softly, then with more conviction. “My name is Eponine and I’m on the run from the law, and my husband.” She spat the word with distaste as thick as sailors blood mixed with salt honey. Her eyes had dried, not so much as blinking as the waves grew stronger and salt spray misted over her face.

“I didn’t choose to marry; the company chose for me. A valuable performer he was, best in all of vaudeville.” The words poured out and the wind picked up, sending tendrils of Cosette’s hair tangling around Eponine’s ears and face.

“What went wrong?” Cosette asked softly. She brought a hand up to caress Eponine’s face and Eponine leaned into the touch, a rock in the midst of Poseidon's rage.

“He was an utter bastard. Montparnasse, fond of knives and his fists when he was too drunk to see straight. Smacked me around so badly I couldn’t...I couldn’t even perform. Father said it was my fault, that I wasn’t to nag, that I was to go quietly. I spat in his face. Montparnasse’s too.” She paused to breathe in deeply and rid the waver from her voice. “Lopped off my hair the first chance I had. Montparnasse always liked my hair the most. Lusted the rest of me too; there wasn’t much love in his heart, and the little that was there was for himself.”

“He is a _fool_.” Cosette hissed.

Eponine smiled wryly at the conviction in her words. Cosette wanted to will away the hardened sadness behind her eyes, to smooth the shadows and fill the gaunt cheeks with life and warmth.

She swam back slightly, only adding to the waves that had begun glancing at Eponine’s shoulders. (The rocky shore had been drifting further and further away as they spoke, becoming nothing more than a thin line on the horizon.)

With anger and passion surging through her bones Cosette grasped Eponine’s shoulders. She held tight as she swam, pulling Eponine close to lead her through a demented waltz, twisting and turning with the raging currents of the ocean.

“How admirable you are, my love, deserving of more devotion than the sea god Poseidon! Never have I met someone so free...to clutch at freedom is more than most may ever dream and here you are, my brave, beautiful love, rid of the shackles that bound you once to land. You were destined for the sea, is it not clear? Will you join me, love, when I must return home at the breaking of the dawn sun?”

Eponine’s eyes were wide as the moon reflected on water, apprehensive but enthralled.

“Yes,” she breathed as the siren unwittingly worked her curse.

The embraced and the raging water stilled around the pair, a pocket of calm amongst turbulent waves.

The mermaid gripped the cold girl’s hands, chilly from the cool ocean spray in the pre-dawn. With one last lungful of the salty air she dove beneath the surface, dragging her landlocked lover down with her.


End file.
